Steve King wants apology after critics hit him for connecting bombings, immigration

To everyone who expressed outrage earlier this week at Iowa Rep. Steve King — for suggesting that the immigration status of the Boston bombers should be taken into account during the Senate immigration debate — he is still waiting for an apology.

“Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa. If that’s the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture,” King told National Review Online, urging focus on national security instead of other components of reform, like a pathway to citizenship.

On Friday, two of the suspects in the bombing, Dzokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified. They are, as it turns out, immigrants to the country. Reports say Dzokhar was born in Kyrgyzstan and Tamerlan was born in Russia. Tamerlan was killed during the night in a firefight with police. Dzokhar reportedly became an American citizen on September 11, 2012.

In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, King did not draw any connections between the pending legislation and the developments in the Boston case. But he did say that the identification of the suspects had vindicated his earlier statements.

“Most of what I said the other day…most all of it was spot on,” King said, acknowledging that his speculation that they might have been in the United States on student visas had been wrong.

“There were critics that immediately attacked me on that and I’m waiting on their apology,” he said.

“There’s a lot of hyperventilators out there,” who, King said, “when they find out they’re wrong, they never step up.”

King said that at the moment, however, the “number one focus of effort and prayer is the capture of the individual that’s on the loose.”